Firstly, I am not a professional video maker, in fact I am barely a competent musician, but one facet of making and releasing music these days is that you have to do things yourself, whether that be administration, contracts, writing, mixing, producing, arranging, distribution, building web sites, social media management, blogging, promotional work or a load of other stuff. One of those things is making videos.
Over the years I have made a few, not many of them have been very good, and looking back to the early ones, some have been terrible. But hey, we all have to learn as we go. With these new albums, Diurnal and Adventures in Anhedonia, I wanted to make some videos that really did the songs justice and also looked more professional than my previous efforts.
The video for Ghosted was the start of that process and I learned a lot from making it. I purchased some software which I had to learn to use, along with some basic techniques as I went along. I was very happy with how it turned out in the end, and I think it looks pretty good.
Next came Angel Of Flies. This one was really a labour of love and swearing. I learned a lot about how to use certain techniques and how to realise some of the imagery and ideas that came into my mind. I only wish I had chosen a shorter song! This one took about 2 weeks of solid hard work to make and produce, but I am really happy with how it turned out. If you haven’t seen it yet … here is it is
When it came to the time to make a new video for a track from Adventures In Anhedonia, I knew that I wanted to use Antonio Seijas’ fantastic album artwork as a basis for the video, I just had absolutely no idea how to do anything with it. I have had a great working relationship with Antonio over the years and he never fails to deliver incredible art based on the music, lyrics and a brief. For Adventures In Anhedonia, I was blown away, it was exactly what I had hoped for and more. It is truly stunning, in my opinion. The image of the character in black and white in the midst of the neon landscapes was an idea I had had to represent Anhedonia, and Antonio made it look so perfect, so spectacular. I just had to use these images somehow.
So, how could I make a video with that look?
erm ..
erm ..
Well, I tried a few things, tried more free software, read some articles and tried to create some short clips … and failed. They all looked terrible. Then I started to play around with the still images and some photo effects, which led to the idea of a manga / webtoon style animation, more stop motion and drawing led than fully animated.
Then the work started … and experimentation …
The artwork itself was never going to be enough to make a video with, so how could I create my own extensions of the artwork?
I used old photos of my trips to Japan and converted them into a style of image close to what Antonio had designed, this involved a lot of trial and error with techniques to achieve something close to his art. And a lot of swearing.
Once I had those images I needed to animate parts of them to create a feeling of movement and life. That took an immense amount of swearing, trial and mostly error, and severe amounts of patience. Removing backgrounds, creating layers, cutting out sections, etc.
Then I had to have enough character images to be able to create the illusion of moving through the scenes. For this I had to use some overlay techniques, but I also needed more images, so my wife took some photos of me walking to and from the camera, all of which had to be individually converted for the video. I wanted to do more of them but I knew even this would be a huge amount of work to prepare them for the video. But it worked. With a lot more swearing and the occasional medicinal beer. You can kind of see the process for the creation in these images …
Then came creating the story and flow of the video and overlaying every individual character image and animation … patience … swearing … software crashes … lots of swearing … more beer … and gin.
Finally it was ready …
I am really pleased with how it turned out. I can already see how I could improve it further, but sometimes you have to just say “it’s done”.
I really hope that people enjoy and appreciate it for what it is, and the song itself, which is very personal to me. Here it is …
Cheers
/Adrian